1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of wireless communication. More specifically, the present invention relates to the problem of concurrent wireless communication with multiple communication partners of different wireless communication protocols.
2. Background Information
Advances in microprocessor and communication technology have led to the increase in popularity of wireless communication. Once confined to the privileged, wireless voice communication have become affordable and available to the masses. Today, various efforts are under way to apply wireless communication to replace attachment cables used for attaching peripheral devices, such as printers, scanners and the like, as well as networking cables used for connecting clients, servers and the like. A leading candidate to accomplish the former is commonly known to those skilled in the art as the Bluetooth technology or Bluetooth protocol. Examples of technology to accomplish the later include the different variants of the IEEE 802.11 Standard published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, 802.11, (Frequency Hopping, Direct Sequence), 802.11a, 802.11b, as well as Home RF, also known as Shared Wireless Access Protocol (SWAP) to those skilled in the art.
It is desirable for various applications to have wireless devices that operate in accordance with different protocols, and overlapping frequencies, to operate proximately located to each other. Most wireless protocols employ carrier sense collision detection, and random back off to resolve collision or interference. However, experience has shown that prior art collision detection and back off approaches could substantially degrade the performance of both networks operating with overlapping frequencies. Accordingly, an improved approach to allow wireless devices operating with different protocols and overlapping frequencies to operate proximately close to each other is needed.